Following Austen

Top Ten Spiritual Jane Austen Places

I'm thrilled to post this!  (Thanks, BajaJaneite for sending in the link -- I've been wanting to share it with you all.)

I did a gallery for BeliefNet with pictures from my trip and thoughts on the spiritual Austen places I visited -- spiritual being rather loosely defined, as in perhaps relating to (ahem...) the cult of Colin Firth. ;-)

Check it out!  The pics are some of my absolute favorites.  They're also running an excerpt from my book.

Photo of the Roman Baths (copyright Lori Smith 2005)

Booksigning pics

Booksigning last night was fantastic.  Thanks to all who came out -- what a fabulous little celebration -- and to all who sent good thoughts and prayers my way.  It meant so much to have family and friends there.  We had a standing-room-only crowd, and sold every available copy!

A few of my favorite pics...

 

 

Pics from Steventon hike

Here's a series of pics that go along with the article I posted yesterday.

St. Nicholas church in Steventon -- where Jane's father was rector.  The yew tree to the left is where they used to hide the church key.  It was such a gorgeous day...

Can you spot the copse of trees?  ;-)

The lazy cows.  Anyone know what kind they are?

A typical stile...

Here's one example of a trail marker.  This one was pretty tricky--it was hidden behind trees, and I was coming from the opposite direction.

Lovely Ashe House (now a private home), where Jane's friend and mentor Anne Lefroy lived.

The quiet lane Ashe House is on.

Ashe churchyard

One of the Lefroy graves--I think this may be Anne's.

I loved this guy!

Summer wheat--and help "aiming left"

Deane manor house where Jane's friends the Harwoods lived. Jane attended dances here.

Inside Steventon church

A detail of some of the amazing painting on the church walls.

Me in the archway of St. Nicholas (also the pic I'm using for the blog bio)

Phil & Sue Howe of Hidden Britain Tours.  They rescued me in Deane and made sure I got into the Steventon church.  For anyone out there who doesn't feel like trekking through the countryside, they've recently set up a tour highlighting all the Austen sites in Hampshire.  I highly recommend them!

Pics of Bath

I've posted pictures of Bath on the Squidoo lens.  I'm not sure I like the way the Flickr system works--you have to make your pictures public, or viewable by everyone who goes to the Flickr site, in order to put them on your lens.  Anyway, I may post the rest of them here.

In other news, I finished editing the proposal.  Crack open the Girl Scout cookies!  Hoping that will be on its way to publishers in the near future.  (It's very cool and a tiny bit scary, actually, that this could become a real book.  I can remember when my first book came out, for the first week or so I panicked, thinking that I didn't want anyone at all to read it.  I'm pretty sure that will happen this time, too.)

And in completely unrelated news, there seems to be a family of mice in my house.  I can't abide the thought of killing them, but they seem very uninterested in the sweet humane catch-and-release traps with peanut butter inside.  Last night one scooted right around the trap to go behind the TV when I was sitting RIGHT THERE painting my nails.  The nerve!  On Saturday, my roommate and I were talking and watching BraveHeart (who can resist Mel Gibson in a kilt?) when one got stuck in a glue trap.  This is when our newfound animal rights activism kicked in.  It was so terribly inhumane to listen to him squealing and struggling to get free.  To think, you're just supposed to let them struggle there until they die of a heart attack??  Impossible.  We started to root for the little guy after about two seconds.   We took the trap outside and doused him in olive oil, and he jumped away leaving little oily footprints behind.